


Tautology (Knights and Knaves)

by Mrinalinee



Category: Band of Brothers, Battlestar Galactica (2003)
Genre: F/M, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-09-02
Updated: 2009-09-02
Packaged: 2018-01-06 20:02:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,158
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1110948
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mrinalinee/pseuds/Mrinalinee
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>But steel doesn't bend much either. (All of this will happen again.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Tautology (Knights and Knaves)

**Author's Note:**

> 1sentence fic, for themeset alpha. Contains references to Speirs's real life marriage. No disrespect to real people is intended.

#01 – Comfort

The paratroops are highly trained men, and not given to hysteria or hallucination; otherwise they (like thousands of years of soldiers before them) might talk of a woman who comes before death and holds her weapon like a shield, the dawn spread out behind her.

 

#02 - Kiss

He remembers the salient points of their parting, the brush of her wedding ring against his mouth, the lengthened vowels of her English English soft and without sorrow.

 

#03 - Soft

First he sees a reflection, blurred around the edges, backlit by streetlamps.

 

#04 - Pain

She offers him a cigarette; he takes it.

 

#05 – Potatoes

He barely notices what he eats, but he notices the pattern of _her_ eating, the unmitigated gusto of someone who hardly remembers the taste of food.

 

#06 - Rain

She operates in the downpour. 

 

#07 - Chocolate

She unwraps the bar and says, “Combat rations, huh?” and yes, he remembers those too. 

 

#08 - Happiness

She’s an anomaly, not American (though her accent suggests it) or Berliner, a woman with the efficient strut of a military man; he’ll keep her close but he wants to know why.

 

#09 - Telephone

Voices in combat are muffled and hard to decipher, and this is what he thinks about the first time he fucks Kara Thrace, distorted combat noises – shouting from far away.

 

#10 – Ears

Her method of flirtation is unusual, boisterous and combative; at one point she glances over her shoulder at him and blinks away again.

 

#11 – Name

“Captain,” she says, but she isn’t talking to him. 

 

#12 – Sensual

Of the imprecise clatter of civilian life, these are the sounds he isolates: the click of her heels against the pavement, the click of her nails against the gun barrel.

 

#13 – Death

Peacetime is discomfiting to him; nothing specific to focus on, not knowing who he is expected to fight.

 

#14 – Sex

It came as no surprise that her husband was still alive; the war was over, the right rules no longer applied.

 

#15 – Touch

She mutters angrily, “There must be some way out of here,” and he says, “We’re not lost.”

 

#16 – Weakness

She’s a loud drunk, sloppy and spilling over the edges, but she never shows her cards.

 

#17 – Tears

He asks her what she wants, and her face draws up in hard lines; “Frak you,” she says.

 

#18 – Speed

She has a gun to the suspect’s head, and he finds himself smiling; he’s always appreciated competence.

 

#19 – Wind

He likes the cold weather of Berlin; sometimes it reminds him of Bastogne.

 

#20 – Freedom

“There is a purpose,” she says, and it must be nice, to think that.

 

#21 – Life

When she cuts off her hair, she draws more eyes than before, none of them admiring; but her walk is surer, thoughtless.

 

#22 – Jealousy

“Is that even yours?” she asks, and when he says nothing, her smile only gets wider.

 

#23 – Hands

He remembers Brechtesgaden: thin air, knives with bone handles; Welsh, drunk and giggling on Hitler’s champagne (one arm draped clumsily over his shoulder: “Too bad you didn’ get to kill ‘im y’rself Ron”) had dropped one of those knives; it’s still in England, he remembers.

 

#24 – Taste

Her skin is slick with sweat, her knuckles are grated; she licks up his neck and her nails leave memories of pain across his back.

 

#25 – Devotion

He has always been able to command the respect of his subordinates; she eyes him with tipsy belligerence, her lip curling under, and he’s intrigued.

 

#26 – Forever

Whether it’s theft that he catches her at, or treason, the punishment is the same, but she glares down the barrel at him as if she could mislead death by staring at it long enough, and never looking away.

 

#27 – Blood

So he expects the blow, when it comes, and he waits to lower his weapon.

 

#28 – Sickness

She runs like a man, with the focus of a soldier; when he falls into step and offers her a cigarette, she doesn’t take it.

 

#29 – Melody

They play Wagner; she hums along.

 

#30 – Star

It’s a moment of startled recognition, a brief-twisting-up-of-the-neck, half-formed expectation, but he doesn’t miss it.

 

#31 – Home

He wonders how she can be so directionless without it, so full of longing for something untenable.

 

#32 – Confusion

She raises speculation among all personnel, military and civilian, German and American, and he perceives the value of their discomfort.

 

#33 – Fear

All eyes turn to him when he enters the room.

 

#34 - Lightning/Thunder

“Gods,” she mutters, an epithet, or a request.

 

#35 – Bonds

She bites his shoulder when she comes, and he doesn’t wonder if it’s a name she’s trying to muffle, or nothing at all.

 

#36 - Market

She returns with the information he needs and takes a cigarette without asking.

 

#37 - Technology

She traces a circle in spilled whiskey and says, “All of this has happened before,” staring at his sidearm.

 

#38 - Gift

They play Beethoven; she doesn’t know it.

 

#39 - Smile

He will not hesitate to kill her if she makes it necessary; nevertheless he is beginning to regard the curve of her mouth with something like affection. 

 

#40 – Innocence

He wonders at her motives; it’s been pointed out to him that he could be committing treason: he agrees and indicates that his agreement should be put on record.

 

#41 - Completion

“Frak that,” she says and the softened word is harder in her careless mouth, “I’m going to live until I can die fighting.”

 

#42 - Clouds

Once, she asks him if he fought in the Pacific.

 

#43 - Sky

She picks out constellations one by one, rolling their names in her mouth: goat, bull, archer.

 

#44 – Heaven

He remembers Rachamps, the heavy scented air; he remembers the press of Lipton’s arm outside that church, the unobtrusive esteem in the set of Lipton’s mouth.

 

#45 – Hell

Peacetime and he drinks frequently enough – blurred and sharpening his focus on the unimportant -; here, she swaggers ahead of him, stops and looks back, and he keeps watching.

 

#46 - Sun

Outside, her gaze is careful, directed; he thinks _pilot’s instincts_ (paratrooper's instincts). 

 

#47 – Moon

“Like Artemis,” she repeats and leans forward to blow smoke in the would-be poet’s face – her eyes fixed on a point on the wall, beyond his head.

 

#48 - Waves

She smells of sweat and gunpowder; he likes this; he’s happy.

 

#49 - Hair

“I’m not frakking going anywhere. The fun’s just starting,” she says; she tucks her hair behind her ear; she takes the cigarette that he offers her.

 

#50 - Supernova

He’s always found listening to rumors advantageous; he hears that she’s a spy for what’s left of the Third Reich; he hears that she’s a spy for the Soviets; he hears that she’s been appointed by the CID to track down escaped war prisoners and collaborators; he hears that she hacked off her hair and fought in the trenches; he hears that she appears to dying soldiers, her smile hot and bright like stars’ exploding.


End file.
